“There were so many stories, so much crying and so much pain.” On her first Shabbat since fleeing Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris led two services to welcome the Jewish holy day — one online for congregants scattered abroad, and one for a small group in Poland.
With some 200,000 Jews in Ukraine, one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, it is inevitable that many Jewish people are also among those fleeing.
“Why is a Russian regime that claims to be “denazifying” Ukraine brutalizing a country led by a democratically elected and proud Jew?” said David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee , who visited Poland this week to assess the needs of refugees.
Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said some of the Jewish refugees plan to go to Israel while others intend to join family in countries like Germany or Britain. Others, he said, “have to figure out what to do with their lives — do they want to settle in Poland or elsewhere?” Gris is awaiting a sponsorship letter in hopes of going to the U.K. She was ordained a rabbi at the Leo Baeck College in London and has friends and colleagues there who are supporting her.
Gris said she could understand that reaction from a nation under attack, but it still hurt because “my heart and soul is with Ukraine.”
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